- From: Heydon Pickering <heydon@heydonworks.com>
- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 12:30:57 +0100
- To: public-html@w3.org
- Message-ID: <CAJFUXE8YvpaQY+paif+1Dv0kYjOBAekPMdGD=6ndBam+D3SB5Q@mail.gmail.com>
I'm writing to propose the deprecation of the <blockquote> element in favour of a slight modification to author advice regarding the <figure> and corresponding <figcaption> elements. The problem with <blockquote> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The content of a <blockquote> "must be quoted from another source" [1], and yet the only official way to cite that source it through the associated "cite" attribute. To quote HTML5 Doctor, "That’s hidden data, however, and despite the potential for exposing the cite attribute via CSS and/or JS<http://www.holovaty.com/writing/176/>, that’s not as useful as a visible link." Because "cite" is merely an attribute, it has been left to authors to adopt disparate techniques and elements for displaying the citation as text separately. Is it just a link, or a link in another paragraph, or do I use the <cite> element? Or what? Well, <cite> is more or less _equivalent_ to <blockquote>, plus it can only be used for the titles of works, not authors, so that's no good. HTML5 Doctor suggested <footer> (which I adopted for some time), but this was later deemed non-conforming [3]. Without a dedicated element, how are parsers supposed to know which contents of the <blockquote> are the quotation itself and which contents are _about_ the quotation? Uses of <blockquote> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The original definition of blockquote was largely unsemantic and, although "the non-semantic use of the blockquote element purely to indent text is deprecated by the W3C" [4], the lack of a proper citation/attribution element, means that this usage lingers on: <blockquote> is often used to highlight blocks of text belonging to the same document. When I raised the idea of deprecating <blockquote> in favour of <figure> on Twitter it was this (technically incorrect) usage that one replier objected to being made obsolete: To them (and who can blame them, given <blockquote>'s legacy?), <blockquote> can be used for "magazine-style snippets from a body of text, for one". <figure> and <figcaption> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The beauty of the <figure> and <figcaption> element pairing is the simplicity of the relationship: <figure>: thing <figcaption>: information about thing And it already permits a variety of applications: - annotate illustrations - diagrams - photos [Example A]<http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/figure#Example_A> - code listings ...[5] Why not just add "quotations" to this list? Arguably, we don't even _have_ to add "quotations", since <figure> is already specified to contain "one figcaption <http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/figcaption.html#figcaption>element" either followed or preceded "by flow content"<http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/terminology.html#flow-content>. So basic paragraphs, as well as all the other usual suspects can be included. All that needs to be done is to add some clarification about quotations in <figure>'s author advice. Optional <figcaption>s for quotations ------------------------------------------------- The <figcaption> element is essentially meta-information about the <figure>, whatever that figure's contents may be. If it's an image it may be a description of the image or the origin of that image; perhaps even which camera setup was used to take the image. If it's a code snippet, it may be information about the function of the code or the syntax that is used. Quotations, like illustrations, images and code snippets might make use of a <figcaption> to credit the author of the artifact; the <blockquote>'s content. This, also, is information about the figure. As with other uses of <figure>, the inclusion of <figcaption> can be optional. In practise, this means you could use <figure> to reproduce some text from the same document (no attribution needed) or use it to support the document's arguments/theme with an attributed quotation from another author and/or source. This is superior to <blockquote> which _insists_ that its contents should be from an external source [1], but provides no clear (semantic) pattern for citing that source. Summary ----------------------------------------------------------------------- <blockquote> is a semantically unrigorous element with a confusing legacy which invites misuse. Figure (with figcaption or otherwise) already does the job of <blockquote> better. The <figcaption> element is far superior to the esoteric "cite" attribute for source attribution and is available to both human readers and parsers. As far as I can see, very little work would have to be done to make <figure>/<figcaption> a candidate for quotations except changes to author advice. Blockquote would simply have to be deprecated: So long as it's still there, authors will still use it and they will continue to use it differently from one another. <http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/terminology.html#flow-content> [1] http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/blockquote [2] http://html5doctor.com/blockquote-q-cite/ [3] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13082 [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockquote_element#cite_note-HTM5-def-1 [5] http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/figure
Received on Thursday, 15 August 2013 11:31:29 UTC